Bearing in mind:

I think this is the biggest issue, we’ve been talking at cross purposes. The point this dingbat has been trying to make the whole time has been the cultural continuity.

So you stating a long lasting Turkish cultural heritage going back to pre-Ottoman times does actually make my point for me. Even if I do want to slightly brighten that Ottoman culture:

As we both agree, imperial expansion and nation building tends to be built on a foundation of blood and bones, and generally involves at least a bit of light genocide. The establishment of the Ottoman Empire, did those same killings and warring that has seen nations rise and carve out territory across history.

However the Ottomans, as well as their Turkic antesscents, Seljuk and Orguz, were less bloodthirsty and murderous than your large post mostly about the atrocities committed at the end of the First World War as the Ottoman Empire fell. The area that they governed was, and despite the massacres and ethnic cleansing attempts of the 19th through 21st centuries remains, an area of huge religious and ethnic diversity.

Zoroastrians, Jews, a multitude of Christian (and indeed Islamic) denominations cover the region. And in fact, outside of the bloody establishment (as you tell us all nations are) and collapse of the Ottoman Empire for centuries it was a land of religious and ethnic tolerance, and many Jews and Dissenting Christians would flee to it for sanctuary from central Europe. Even the modern target if Turkish hate, the Kurds, had autonomy and self governance within the Ottoman Empire into the 19th century.

It is a shame that that part of Ottoman culture, respect, tolerance, and multiculturalism, has slipped away from modern Türkish culture and identity; as nationalism, alas, not a uniquely Türkish problem, has risen to take its place. The interplay of nationalism, nation building-butressing, and racism, is intriguing and perhaps has a lot of interesting and useful ideas to be explored to help solve modern problems around the world.